In defense of military history

This is a valuable piece by Robert Farley. There are many valuable and important ways to study history. But it’s baffling to me that anyone would think that questions like “Why was the Wehrmacht so good at fighting wars?” or “How well did the North Vietnamese Army evade American airpower?” or “What did conscription during Vietnam do to the fighting power of the US Army?” or “What let Japan defeat Russia in 1905?” or numerous other questions are historically trivial or not worth studying. As a historically-minded political scientist, I rely heavily on skilled historians to grapple with questions like these. It’s a shame to see “open hostility” to this kind of research.